Metacritic reviews

Unpretentiously and likeable Peter Hyams is one of the few hacks still working at this budget level, and he relishes the chance to make an audience jump, not only with some neat monster effects and a pile of mutilated corpses but also with some subtleties of editing and lighting, plus one of the loudest jump-out-of-your-seat soundtracks in a recent memory.

Yes, we've seen it all before. But The Relic proves that the hoariest cliches, when stirred together with enough money, shaken vigorously and artfully lighted, can still make the adrenaline surge.

All of this is actually a lot of fun, if you like special effects and gore.

But Peter Hyams, who's both director and director of photography, forces us to constantly strain to see what isn't there, until ultimately the screen explodes in welcome light, a cathartic finale in broad visceral terms even if the drama hasn't inspired much emotion.

Hyams the director ("Sudden Death," "Timecop," "The Star Chamber") operates at too much of a fevered pitch for things not to eventually get out of hand -- accelerating violence and horror eventually hit maximum velocity and warp into nonsense, no matter how erudite the script.

Much like the DNA-scrambled beast to which the title alludes, this film is a chimerical chop-shop product, consisting mostly of spare parts pulled from Alien, Jurassic Park, and even The Ghost and the Darkness.

There are moments when The Relic is almost enjoyable, albeit in a visceral sort of way. Unfortunately, when all is said and done, this horror/science fiction amalgamation seems like nothing more ambitious than a bad reworking of elements from Aliens, Species, Jaws, and Predator.

Sizemore ("Heat") and Miller, though saddled with a lot of scientific DNA jargon, are really the only lively people in this dense, gruesome film that stubbornly refuses to break out of its contrived atmosphere.

The monster effects, as designed by Stan Winston, are stunners, but after Twister, it should be obvious that it's not the quality of the effects that matter so much as the quality of the film in which they appear.

It took four people to write the screenplay for The Relic. All I can say is that I hope these people have not quit their day jobs.